Agreed; nor do we pretend to explain them, for hardly anything is to be
explained upon this earth. We are content simply to ascribe them to the
incomprehensible power of the mediums, which is no more improbable than
the survival of the dead and has the advantage of not going outside the
sphere which we occupy and of bearing relation to a large number of
similar facts that occur among living people. Those singular faculties
are baffling only because they are still sporadic and because but a very
short time has elapsed since they received scientific recognition.
Properly speaking, they are no more marvellous than those which we use
daily without marvelling at them: our memory, for instance, our
understanding, our imagination and so forth. They form part of the great
miracle that we are; and, having once admitted the miracle, we should be
surprised not so much at its extent as at its limits.
Nevertheless, to close this chapter, I am not at all of opinion that we
must definitely reject the spiritualistic theory: that would be both
unjust and premature. Hitherto, everything remains in suspense. We may
say that things are still very little removed from the point marked by
Sir William Crookes, in 1874, in an article which he contributed to the
_Quarterly Journal of Science_:
“The difference between the advocates of Psychic Force and the
Spiritualists consists in this—that we contend that there is as yet
insufficient proof of any other directing agent than the Intelligence of
the Medium, and no proof whatever of the agency of Spirits of the Dead;
while the Spiritualists hold it as a faith, not demanding further proof,
that Spirits of the Dead are the sole agents in the production of all
the phenomena. Thus the controversy resolves itself into a pure question
of _fact_, only to be determined by a laborious and long-continued
series of experiments and an extensive collection of psychological
_facts_, which should be the first duty of the Psychological Society,
the formation of which is now in progress.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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